


Plate Tectonics

by Anonymous



Series: Within/Without [13]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 3x14, It's not just a river in Egypt, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24399142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Oh, Eddie,” Athena said in tones of deep disappointment. “Not you, too.”3x14 “The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1”—but Eddie is there, too.The consequences are pretty seismic for him.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Within/Without [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738876
Comments: 44
Kudos: 497
Collections: Anonymous





	Plate Tectonics

**Author's Note:**

> Initially, I wrote this as a coda to 3x14 with Eddie looking for Buck after the call center situation is resolved. But then I realized it would be a lot more fun if Eddie came along for the whole ride. So, in this version, he does.

Vintage Kanye was blasting from the speaker, and Buck was making pour-overs. He bopped his head to “Monster,” rapping along with Nicki Minaj: “ _You could be the king but watch the queen conquer / first things first Imma eat your brains / then Imma start rocking gold teeth and fangs / ’cause that’s what a motherfucking monster do_ —”

“I can’t with you,” Eddie said from where he was sitting at the table, head pillowed on his arms.

Because Buck was a terrible rapper. And it was barely eight in the morning—far too early for any whiteboy wannabe-gangsta shenanigans, Eddie felt.

Buck ignored him, of course, pouring more hot water over the grinds. Eddie had stopped by after dropping Chris off at school, and now they were trying to decide how to spend their day off. Buck was leaning towards rock-climbing or paintballing or something active, but Eddie still hadn’t woken up properly and thought he wouldn’t mind lounging around for a few hours. Maybe he’d perk up with coffee; Buck always brewed it _strong._

“— _give ’em whiplash / I think big cash make ’em blink fast / now look at what you saw / this is what you live for / ah, I’m a motherfucking monster—_ ”

Buck was interrupted by his phone ringing.

“Oh thank god,” Eddie said.

Buck flipped him off and answered. “Yep, go for Buck.”

Eddie closed his eyes, snorting to himself when he heard Buck say, “Is that some kind of riddle? Like who watches the Watchmen?”

Clearly whoever he was talking to was similarly unimpressed, because Buck got briefly defensive, and then he seemed to switch gears entirely: “Wait, why are you calling 9-1-1? Is everything okay?”

Eddie looked up sharply. “Who is it?”

“Chimney.” Buck beckoned him over and put the phone on speaker.

“Your sister said that she loved me,” Chimney was saying.

Eddie raised an eyebrow; Buck frowned and said, “Wasn’t that like the whole point of that big date you had last night? You declare your love, she declares hers…?”

“Yeah, okay, but she didn’t! At least not last night. Look, she made this big deal of saying she couldn’t say those words, and then this morning she blurts them out and hangs up on me…”

“Still not quite sounding like an emergency,” Buck commented, picking up the kettle again. The pour-overs were nearly done, and thank god for that because Eddie was still feeling sluggish and groggy and Chim’s romantic travails weren’t doing much to energize him.

“’Cause I sound insane,” Chim said, and Eddie honestly had to agree with him. “She’s at the call center, what could happen there? You’re right. You know what, forget it.”

The line disconnected, and Kanye was back: “ _I crossed a line_ —”

Mercifully, Buck paused the music. “Okay, that was weird,” he said.

“Extremely,” Eddie concurred. He thought back to his conversation with Chim in the locker room—had it only been yesterday?—and distantly remembered telling him that tomorrow was promised to no one, or some cheesy aphoristic shit like that. “I’m glad he went for it, though, and told her how he feels. Shouldn’t he be happy she said it back, even if it wasn’t to his face?”

“Well…” Buck hesitated, chewing on his lip. “Doug messed her up pretty bad with all that stuff. She told me that saying ‘I love you’ was usually the first line of defense against him, uh, hitting her. So…”

Eddie nodded, and Buck didn’t elaborate. According to Buck, Maddie had gotten very sensitive about her personal life turning into gossip-fodder for twenty-four-hour shifts at the 118, and Eddie could see Buck doing his best to respect that. He knew, though, that the mere thought of Doug—and the memory of what had gone down at Big Bear a year ago—still plunged Buck into a maelstrom of fury and self-recrimination. Eddie knew, and he did his best to help, but...

They drank their coffee, and, gradually, Eddie began to feel more awake, more willing to consider the possibility of actually _doing_ something today. He decided he wouldn’t mind hitting up the climbing gym later; Buck had been looking into adaptive rock-climbing possibilities for Christopher, and Eddie was eager to do his own recon. First the skateboard, now this—Buck had expanded the horizons for what Christopher might achieve beyond his own wildest imaginings, and god, Eddie loved him for it.

He did.

He’d accepted it.

Sort of.

His faculties sharpened by caffeine, Eddie noticed that Buck had gotten awfully jittery, fidgeting around even more than usual. Chimney had clearly gotten inside his head, so Eddie told him that he might as well call Maddie himself to see what was up.

Buck nodded. He started up the stairs to his bedroom so he could have the conversation in private, but he was back almost immediately, a perturbed little crease in his brow. “It went straight to voicemail,” he said.

“She’s probably on the line with somebody,” Eddie pointed out.

“Yeah, I know. I’m gonna try Josh now, just to cover the bases.”

Voicemail.

The same explanation probably held true, but Eddie now had to agree that something felt a little… off.

Then Chimney rang again, to announce that he was going down to the call center to see for himself.

“But what if something _is_ wrong? Maybe we should call the police,” Buck suggested.

“I think someone already did,” Chimney said. “Athena just turned up at my door.”

The two of them waited, still on the line with Chim, increasingly impatient, as Athena made her case to the higher-ups. “They can’t just send in SWAT,” Eddie told Buck in an undertone. “If something’s up at the call center, the element of surprise is all we have.”

Buck nodded. “Let _me_ talk to Athena!” he barked into the phone, and repeated what Eddie had said.

“Let’s go for a drive,” they heard Athena say, and then: “Talk to you later, Buck.”

“No, don’t hang up—GODDAMMIT!” Buck bellowed. He rounded on Eddie: “Can you believe that? They hung up on me!”

Eddie sighed. Visions of a lazy morning and a leisurely afternoon at the gym went up in smoke. It was going to be one of those days, then. “Okay. Fine. Let’s go.”

To his surprise, Buck pulled him into a tight hug. It was a bit like being crushed by a python, Buck’s enormous biceps squeezing the air right out of his lungs. “Thank you,” Buck breathed into his ear. “God, _thank you_ , Eddie.”

His arms had been clamped to his sides, so he didn’t have the option of reciprocating the hug. “I know you have to be sure,” he told Buck, wheezing slightly. “And I wasn’t there for you, the last time Maddie was in trouble, so—I’ve got your back this time, I promise. Even if it’s nothing.”

Buck struggled valiantly to keep to the speed limit as they drove downtown. Eddie watched him gnaw on his lip as he white-knuckled the steering wheel, but he kept quiet in the passenger seat. He wasn’t sure what sort of reassurances were appropriate to offer—he didn’t really _know_ Maddie, strange as that sounded. Buck had been enmeshed in the Diaz family for a year and a half now—not just Eddie and Chris, Abuela and Tía Pepa too—but Eddie had no comparable status as an honorary Buckley. Buck had made it clear that there was no such thing; there was only him and Maddie. Eddie’s primary interactions with Maddie took place within the context of big group gatherings. She seemed a bit shy around Eddie sometimes, as if she weren’t sure how to relate to him. It had taken Eddie a solid month to admit to Buck that it stung when Maddie had lectured Albert so sternly against following Eddie into the army.

“I mean, it’s not like I would have recommended it either,” he’d said, during one of their late-night sharing sessions when most of the filters had fallen away in a haze of exhaustion and beer. “I didn’t enlist because I thought it was the right thing to do or because I wanted to fuck shit up in the Middle East. I enlisted because I didn’t know how else to support my family. And maybe I don’t stand by the foreign policy stuff that got us mired down in Afghanistan, but I sure as hell stand by my unit and the people I fought with. “

Buck had nodded. Clearly he’d said something to Maddie, because the next time they saw each other on karaoke night, she’d apologized for it as they watched Buck perform a hair-raising rendition of “Eye of the Tiger” complete with one-armed push-ups. Eddie told her it was fine, because it was. But he still caught Maddie watching him sometimes, like he was a riddle she couldn’t quite solve.

Who watches the Watchmen _,_ indeed.

“Hey,” he said now, leaning forward in his seat, “Is that Athena’s patrol car up ahead? I’m pretty sure that’s her license plate.”

“It definitely is.” Buck hit the accelerator and the jeep shot forward. He swerved right to pass Athena’s cruiser—Eddie swore loudly—and yep, that got her attention, all right. The siren went off and Buck pulled over, breathing hard. 

“Jodido idiota,” Eddie muttered. “Estamos tan jodidos. Hijo de puta, eres tan estúpido…”

Athena rapped on Buck’s window, and he rolled it down.

She was wearing a face like thunder.

“Okay, now, don’t be mad—” Buck started.

Athena looked at him, and then she looked past him. “Oh, Eddie,” she said in tones of deep disappointment. “Not you, too.”

Eddie shifted in his seat. “In my defense, I didn’t know he was gonna cut you off like that.”

“Get out of the car,” Athena ordered. “Both of you.”

They did as they were told.

“Well, well,” Athena said.

“You and Chim hung up on me,” Buck defended himself, while Eddie remained silent. “C’mon, Athena, you _know_ me. You had to know I wasn’t gonna sit around at home while Maddie’s in trouble.”

“ _If_ she’s in trouble,” Athena corrected him. “We have nothing but a handful of coincidences to suggest that anything is out of the ordinary.”

“That was enough for you.”

“And now I’m stuck babysitting three grown men who don’t have enough common sense between them to let me do my job,” she said tartly.

Buck looked at him, but Eddie just raised an eyebrow. Athena was kind of right.

“Sorry?” Buck offered. Unconvincingly.

“You can ride in the back,” Athena said, and started towards her car.

“In the back, like… where you put the criminals?” Eddie objected. He had a bit of a chip about that. It was all very well to put Evan Buckley, Captain America, in the back of a cruiser, but he was a _Diaz._ People would see _him_ sitting there and think he was a member of MS-13 or something.

“You heard me,” Athena said.

If his father could only see him now.

“This is a good thing,” Buck told him, as they traipsed after her. “Now we’re on the inside team, Eddie.”

“Now we’re basically arrested,” Eddie snapped.

Buck slid into the backseat first. Eddie followed, and Athena slammed the door after him.

Chimney didn’t seem surprised to see Buck, but: “You brought Eddie. Of course you brought Eddie,” he said, sighing.

“Yeah, hello to you, too,” Eddie said. 

“He was already at my house!” Buck exclaimed.

“Oh, was he now?”

Eddie didn’t exactly love Chim’s tone.

“Yeah, we were gonna go climbing, but then you called me, and—”

“Now, did you three clowns tell anyone else what was happening at the call center?” Athena asked as she swung into the driver’s seat.

They all shook their heads.

“Good,” she said. “’Cause I’m running out of room in here.”

The three of them were stuck waiting in the car while Athena went to scope out the call center. She even locked them in.

“This sucks,” Buck said.

“But look at us, we’re on the inside team now,” Eddie said dryly.

Chimney was watching them in the rearview mirror.

“ _What_?” Eddie said, aggrieved.

“If I weren’t so worried about Maddie right now, I’d be happy for you two,” Chim said.

“And why’s that?” Buck wanted to know. “Happy for what?”

Eddie knew what was coming, and, sure enough, Chimney delivered: “It’s not just a river in Egypt,” he intoned from the front seat.

Buck didn’t get it, but much to Eddie’s relief, Chimney refrained from breaking it down for him. He just shook his head, like Buck and Eddie were two very stupid individuals whom he was tasked with shepherding from Point A to Point B at great personal cost.

Athena returned a few minutes later, and things began to happen very quickly after that. A mobile command center was established in a nearby parking lot, and the three of them watched, kind of amazed, as it filled with cops and RA units and a whole lot of SWAT teams.

“I’m sorry I thought you were crazy,” Buck said to Chimney.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t,” Chim replied. He looked completely stunned by what was unfolding around them.

“This is a real hostage situation,” Buck turned to hiss at Eddie, like Eddie hadn’t already figured that shit out for himself. “It’s pretty intense. You know, I thought you were sort of kidding when you mentioned SWAT, but… I guess this is really happening, huh?”

“Looks like it,” Eddie said, as groups of heavily armed SWAT officers milled around them. He still retained that faint military distrust of domestic law enforcement, and it irked him to see those guys slinging military-style hardware around so casually, like submachine guns and assault rifles actually belonged on the streets of Los Angeles.

But whatever. SWAT had its uses, clearly. Eddie watched Athena and Captain Maynard liaise between the various commanders; everyone seemed to have a job to do except the three of them.

Buck was practically vibrating at his side; he never handled inaction well. The last time Maddie had been in trouble, Eddie knew, Buck and Athena had essentially carried out the rescue mission themselves. Sure, some other cops had gone along for the ride, but Buck and Athena—okay, mostly Athena—had run point on the operation. And, in the end, Buck had been the one to find Maddie, to wrap her in his arms and carry her to safety.

Not this time, though.

They were pretty fucking useless here.

“Can somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Buck asked loudly, the next time Captain Maynard marched past them, looking tense and harried. The SWAT guys were in a huddle at the other end of the parking lot, and it felt like something was about to go down. Maynard took pity on them, but she wasn’t exactly reassuring in her explanation: “Why do you think I asked for so many RA units?”

Chim turned a little green.

“Then let me help!” Buck interjected hotly. “I can do something!”

“You already have. The three of you were the first to figure out that something was wrong.”

“But that’s not good enough! I want to go in there with—”

“SWAT?” She shook her head. “Firefighter Buckley, that is not your job.”

Eddie bumped their shoulders together. _C’mon, Buck_ , he thought. _Cool it_ —

“Well, couldn’t Eddie and I go in there _after_ SWAT?” Buck said wildly. “Eddie, he—he’s military, he was in Afghanistan—he was on the team that took down Osama bin Laden—”

“I certainly was not,” Eddie said sharply.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Buck sighed, after Captain Maynard had left.

“Osama bin Laden, seriously?” Chimney said.

“I wasn’t even _in_ Afghanistan when that happened,” Eddie added, because he could be kind of a pedantic bastard sometimes. “They found bin Laden in Pakistan, anyway, and it wasn’t the army that got him, it was a special op with SEAL Team Six—”

“I don’t care!” Buck practically hollered. “Eddie—I—don’t—care!”

Eddie hustled Buck a short distance away, out of Chimney’s earshot. “You need to pull yourself together _now_ ,” he said in a fierce undertone. “You’re not helping Maddie, and Chimney’s already freaked out enough. Bench the ego, stop acting like a goddamn lunatic. This isn’t our show. Like it or not, we’re sitting this one out. You hear me?”

Buck glared at him. For a second, Eddie wondered if Buck was going to hit him. He would probably let him, if it would make him feel better. But Buck was only hot-headed; he didn’t have the kind of rage inside of him that Eddie did. He took a deep breath, nodded, and slumped into himself, looking, for all his great height, like a lost little kid.

Eddie wrapped a hand around the back of Buck’s neck and leaned in.

He heard Buck’s breath hitch as he brought their foreheads together.

“Maddie will be okay,” he murmured. “And so will you. I’ve got you.”

“Promise?” Buck’s voice wavered. Eddie could feel his breath against his own lips.

“You know I can’t do that. But I’m pretty damn sure.”

He saw movement from the corner of his eye. Still keeping a firm grip on Buck’s shoulder, he drew away slightly. “SWAT’s going in now.”

Old habit and displaced adrenaline had him reaching under his shirt for the St. Christopher medallion. He’d already taken it out and kissed it before he realized what he was doing.

He could feel Buck’s eyes on him; he tucked the medal away and shrugged, slightly embarrassed.

Buck smiled crookedly. “Well, now you’ve invoked Christopher,” he said. “Guess everything’s gonna be okay, huh?”

“Ojalá,” Eddie said. 

When it was all over—and god, the operation only took a few minutes, minutes that seemed to stretch on into infinity—he and Buck watched as Maddie and Chimney embraced in front of the call center.

“I’m surprised you’re not over there with your sister,” Eddie commented, a sour taste rising in his throat as he observed the tearful reunion below. Memories of the first time he’d come home from Afghanistan—and the second—and the third—flickered through his mind. Shannon sobbing in his arms. Shannon pulling away to strike weakly at his chest. _Never leave me again, Eddie! Don’t you ever leave me again._ But in the end, she was the one who—

“Maddie already has everything she needs,” Buck said. “And so do I.”

Eddie swallowed. He recalled the little hitch in Buck’s breath as Eddie had pressed their foreheads together back there. Had Buck thought Eddie was about to kiss him?

He had to force himself to look over at Buck, to meet his eyes. He knew what he would see, and he knew what Buck would see looking back at him.

Because Eddie damn well might have, if they hadn’t been surrounded by people, in the middle of a fucking hostage crisis.

He could practically feel the earth’s tectonic plates shifting under his feet.

(He and Buck had done plate tectonics with Christopher last week.

Divergence: Eddie and Shannon, drifting apart.

Transformation: plates sliding past; or, the one that got away.

Convergence: seismic activity, mountains-volcanoes-earthquakes, coming together.

The inevitability of it consoled him; it also made him a little mad. Mostly it scared the shit out of him.)

Eddie looked at Buck, nodded faintly. 

It was only a matter of time now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! You're just the kindest people. 
> 
> The payoff is fast approaching, I promise. Even if the end of quarantine is not.


End file.
